Dog Swordfighting - Lesson 5: Sword Jiggle
- Christopher Tiller
- May 1
- 3 min read
Previously, we were building up Missile's hold to be resistant to any disturbances. We succeeded. He can now hold a pool noodle despite it being all awkward.
Taking a look at the plan we made, the next step is to add some extra difficulty to the noodle.
Upgrading our pool noodle
Before:
After:
The difference here is now the noodle has a loose, wooden core. This adds a new layer of difficulty:
It has extra weight. Missile needs to try a little harder to hold it up.
The weight is imbalanced. The wooden piece creates an uneven weight distribution. (It's not centered)
The rod is loose inside of the noodle, and so the weight balance is inconsistent. He has to be constantly thinking about how to keep it upright each time he holds it.
So yeah, a simple change adds a LOT of new challenges! Here's how it worked out:
He handled it! He was able to hold it for the full count, and he managed to keep stable after I reintroduced the instability. We're on our way!
Getting Greedy
So remember that long super detailed plan I had in the last post?
Yeah I got bored, so I skipped most of it.
Okay hear me out:
Missile has been doing pretty well with these holds. I only show a few of them, but we've been practicing this a lot.
He's getting pretty good at handling the imbalances. Even if it isn't perfect, I don't think we're at risk of regressing.
I'm only human, and I'm getting impatient.
I really don't want to keep making more trips to the store to create more pool noodle sword things.
So we just tried it, okay? Here's the result:
We made it! It wasn't perfect, but that's fine. He's now capable of holding the sword for more than a few seconds. We can just iron out the kinks now!
Ironing out the kinks
The biggest issues I'm noticing are:
He's holding it, and at some points he's holding it solidly, other times he's just kinda lazily letting it fall.
His duration isn't great
Both aren't unexpected though. We can attack them in order:
We can use a variation of the technique from last blog post to ensure he actually grips it solidly. We just need to modify it into a sword-jiggle. (Ha! I did the thing!)
Duration is easy. We have at least a few seconds, so we can just push that time up gradually.
Handling the grip
All I did here was help him by sword-jiggling while he was holding onto it. I'd reward him as he gripped harder.
Duration
Okay, you know how this looks by now. I'm not going to bore you. Start low, slowly push the envelope, reward for longer and longer times, yadda yadda. Missile is good at this now so it's pretty straightforward.
Wrap-up
And that's it! We finally got through all of the hard stuff! (I think, for now)
We've now got a solid hold on an imbalanced object. He can hold it for a good duration, and he doesn't just drop it without thinking. I'm pretty happy with this so next time we're going to start piecing this together into something more cohesive by combining skills and adding a cue!
If you like this kind of stuff, join us over on DogKatas! We've got tons of free skills and plans, and you get to share your training with other like-minded dog training nerds! I'd love to have you there and see what you're up to! Until next time, Happy Training!
* It's worth noting that just because I didn't follow the full plan to the letter, that doesn't mean it's useless. If we end up running into issues we have some reasonable "in-between" steps we can fall back to. But this worked so we're rolling with it.